Democrats To Tell Us What They Really Think?

I spoke yesterday to a conference of the Kentucky Association of Government Communicators. Mark Nickolas of Bluegrass Report joined me in a presentation about blogging.

At one point, Mark said Democrats need to develop the same kind of message discipline Republicans have had.

I would like to see that. Democrats in Washington are pushing hard for tax increases and surrendering against terrorists. They should certainly do a better job of getting that word out.

Conservatism: The Answer To Immigration Trouble

Human Events has an interesting article about immigration. It isn't a new idea, but the point is a good one that conservatives need to be pounding on: economies run on conservative principles work better than those run on the liberal/socialist model.

It should be clear that if Mexico had an economy like ours, their people wouldn't need to risk life and limb fleeing to America for a chance at a better life. We are enabling their liberal inner child, really. So if we start treating the lawbreakers like lawbreakers (felon sounds about right) and going after employers who hire illegals, we should clear them out pretty quickly. The spread of socialism in central America will slow when the countries that adopt those policies are forced to pay their own price. Right now, we pay the price and it is getting too expensive.

Hillary Squeezed Out of Liberal Convention

Hillary Clinton's move to the Left for 2008 has been frustrated mightily as Kentucky Progress has learned that the Daily Kos annual convention will feature her opponent Mark Warner and not her.

Getting a picture of Gov. Warner with liberal flamethrower Markos Moulitsas will be a big help for '08. But for now, just imagining Hillary, rejected by her own, seething and throwing lamps makes today a good day.

Worley No-Shows Pro-Lifers

Sen. Ed Worley (D-Richmond) has done little to endear himself to Christians in 2006.

Despite the trail of fraud scandals plaguing the Senate Democrat Leader, Madison County Right to Life organizers invited him to a forum they held last night. Worley accepted the invite.

Then he didn't show. (free registration required)

The money quote of the evening from the Register story: "Worley has been weakened, Metcalf said. “since I lost to him four years ago by only 1,700 votes. He creates limited liability companies to hide nefarious business deals. He has used his positions as Richmond city manager and then as state senator to increase his own wealth and further his own ambition.”

Another Good Idea From Michigan

Outsourcing benefits public schools there.

Pro-Abortion Ignorance, Arrogance At NKU

A tenured professor at NKU has been exposed as a vandal and a blithering idiot this past week, in an event involving abortion/sanctity of life, freedom of speech, and and separation of church and state issues in the days before the most important Christian holiday of the year.

And the Lexington Herald Leader or the Louisville Courier-Journal couldn't muster much curiosity about the debacle.

It took a student publication to expose a picture of the professor participating in the melee she denied participating in. And, of course, bloggers to help get the word out.

Flattery Earns A Plug

Yes, this site flatters me beyond all reason, so I guess you could say I am just paying it back. It's neat to see someone covering only the Lexington Mayoral Race, though.

The author is a UK Economics professor with a no-nonsense view of this very important race.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-KY6)?

Fair Tax supporters will be interested to know that Congressman Ben Chandler would join as a co-sponsor of the Fair Tax Bill, but Nancy Pelosi won't let him.

Don't believe me? That's fine. Ask him why he won't support scrapping our federal tax code.

Terrorist Website: Impeach Bush, Please

This should tell the Democrats something.

Al Jazeera is doing a poll on its English language website asking if readers think President Bush should be impeached. Not surprisingly, by a three-to-one margin, terrorists and their English-speaking sympathizers say "yes."

Think about this...

Watching Kentucky lawmakers slap each other on the back for borrowing and spending Kentucky into oblivion is a lot like watching the actors on the tv commercial smile and say "I LIKE it that Wellbutrin has a low risk of sexual side affects!"

Paging Doctor Dan...

By now Rep. Harry Moberly is recuperating from his heart attack. Good. May he recover fully.

One funny thing though. Media outlets reported breathlessly all day today that when Moberly fell ill, Sen. Dan Mongiardo was quickly on the scene. My only thought when WVLK-AM in Lexington was reporting on "Doctor Senator Mongiardo" and his heroics was that it was a good thing he didn't do anything to hurt Harry. You see, Dr. Mongiardo doesn't carry medical malpractice insurance. Would have been fun to watch the liberal lawyers jump on that one.

There Oughta Be a Constitutional Amendment

Seems like we might save ourselves a lot of trouble catering to illegals in our hospitals and health clinics, public schools, and courtrooms if we changed the wording of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to benefit "citizens or documented visitors" rather than just "persons."

Welfare For Politicians, Take Two

Congressman Ben Chandler spoke to students at Eastern Kentucky University yesterday. He told them he has a plan to limit the influence of lobbyists in Congress.

His plan is nothing more than welfare for politicians.

The Richmond Register reported: "Public financing of congressional campaigns would be the best way to limit the influence of lobbyists in Congress, Chandler said."

Wow. Very deep.

Three Words: Line Item Veto

I hear too many people making too many good points about the lack of difference between Republicans and Democrats.

Governor Fletcher has a great opportunity to show that a distinct difference still exists.

The folks at the Bluegrass Institute are leading the charge again, urging readers to send the Governor a pen to strike offensive spending from the state budget.

My favorite, by far, is the $50 million bonded to buy computers for schools. Let them use a pencil and a piece of paper for just one more year and you will be able to buy the same computers for about $30-$40 million. There is no more misused tool in our schools than the computers. Better still, keep the $50 million out of it, concentrate more on teaching kids to think, and then computer "literacy" will be a snap when one is needed for more than word processing or playing games.

The New Political Slur

Senator Dan Mongiardo sank to a new low yesterday. Liberals have apparently gotten tired of calling Republicans "Hitler." Now they are invoking the the specter of Benito Mussolini.

Blaming Senate President David Williams for Mongiardo's own failure to read a bill that was coming up for a vote, Mongiardo whined: "We don't have leadership; we have dictatorship. My grandparents came here from Italy to flee fascism."

This guy is a little light in his loafers to be running for Governor. And no, I'm not talking about his questionable "dating" habits.

Normalizing Homosexuality, Kentucky Version

A dog biting a man is not news. Neither should it be newsworthy when a private, Southern Baptist college that prohibits sex outside of marriage and homosexuality kicks out a homosexual student. That didn't stop the Lexington Herald-Leader from putting this story on its front page.

Again, unfortunately, the homosexual lobby is demanding special rights. Their rabid supporters in the MSM are only too happy to help. People who practice homosexuality can freely attend lots of colleges in Kentucky. They just can't go to University of the Cumberlands. If they really wanted to be treated like everyone else, they would see that school as just like Midway College. Men can't go there.

But no. They won't be happy until homosexuals are celebrated everywhere and rules apply to them nowhere.

A Warning For Immigrants?

This is interesting.

Maybe we should put together a DVD and distribute it around Mexico. We could explain to them that using a hospital emergency room as a family doctor, sucking up welfare dollars, and otherwise leeching off our taxpayers will not be tolerated in the United States of America.

Wait a minute... Are we holding Mexican illegals to a higher standard than we do our own citizens? If we would only clamp down on the citizen-bloodsuckers who won't take jobs here in America, maybe we wouldn't have to worry about getting and keeping enough Mexicans to do the work "Americans just won't do."

No matter where you stand on immigration, you have to know that if the illegals keep taking lessons from the leftist protest groups they are going to set off a war they will surely lose.

Ben Chandler's Faith-Based Plea

And they say we are crazy for suggesting humans didn't evolve from lizards and monkeys.

Rep. Ben Chandler declared in a newspaper column that global warming is no longer theory, but is now "an unsettling reality."

The following sentence from Chandler's essay is a stark example of the vacuousness of the radical international enviro-left:

Whether or not you believe recent weather patterns are a result of global warming, there is no doubt that future generations will be drastically impacted by climate change.

In other words, "Even if you are too stupid to understand that George Bush and his oil buddies are causing global warming, you will still be swept up in a hurricane, parched in a drought, or die some other kind of horrible death at the hands of our global warming bugaboo."

Schism on Left: WaPo Off Leak "Scandal" Train

This will make them blow a gasket for sure.

A Cautionary Tale About Runaway Courts

Courts Flunk the Civics Test
By ROSS SANDLER and DAVID SCHOENBROD
April 8, 2006 ;

On March 23, a New York appellate court ordered the state legislature to provide an additional $4.7 billion for operating the New York City schools, plus another $9.2 billion for construction. These are immense sums, even in the Empire State . The advocacy group that brought the suit, Campaign for Fiscal Equity, declared the court's decision would "get real action" because the legislature must "come up with a solution now, right now." This was good spin, but it's not true.

Contrary to a widespread misconception, courts have no power to force a state legislature to appropriate money; nevertheless the ersatz order, coming as it did in the final days of the state's budget process, could tilt the legislators towards more spending. This is apparently what is happening in Albany , where, in a partial tip of their hats to the court, legislators authorized $11.2 billion in new debt to pay for school construction in New York City .

And what was pulled off in Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. v. New York seems to be part of a pattern. Last July in Kansas a similarly timed judicial decision prodded its state legislature to pony up a hefty increase in school funding. This year Texas is under a June 1 deadline to change the source of school funding. Before the scam spreads further, it's time to lay it bare.

In New York , the courts found that the government is violating a state constitutional clause that the legislature "shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of the state may be educated." The Kansas case was to enforce a similar clause. That most children in New York City and elsewhere in the state are not getting much of an education is not the question. What to do about it is.

Plausible suggestions include freeing the schools from rigid union contracts and bureaucratic procedures that make it all but impossible to fire incompetent teachers, reward good ones and remove disruptive students from the classroom. Other potential solutions include more charter schools and vouchers. One strand of thinking relates school failure to cultural norms rather than lack of money. In New York City , spending per pupil is among the highest in the nation, $13,400, and the educational results among the worst. The plaintiffs chose, however, to focus on the solution -- more money -- that delights teacher union allies. The courts played along.

Most people assume that the legislature must cough up the cash because courts have the power of contempt, which allows them to punish those who disobey their orders. In the school case, however, the courts can't punish anyone. State legislators are not defendants in this case, and even if they were, they can't be punished because they are immune from suit. The state's treasury is immune because the court lacks authority to appropriate more funds and can't fine the state for the legislature's unwillingness to do so. The remaining defendants are officials, including Gov. George Pataki. They can't be held in contempt for failing to produce the money because they are powerless under the state constitution to spend money the legislature has not appropriated.

Longstanding impediments to coercing legislators and governors have never stopped courts from nullifying statutes that violate constitutional rights by, for example, segregating schools, or suppressing free speech. But courts rightly have a tougher time when they want to exercise the legislature's power of the purse.

There are, to be sure, cases where courts have indirectly pressured legislators to spend more. The leading one was in New Jersey , in 1976. After the state Supreme Court found that the state had violated a constitutional requirement that all school districts have equal per-pupil funding -- and the legislature failed to give more money to the poorer districts -- the court ordered state officials to close all the schools until the legislature equalized spending. Faced with that prospect the legislature passed an income tax to raise the extra money.

The New Jersey court argued that its job was to vindicate the constitutional right to equal spending and, if the legislature would not achieve that result by increasing spending, the court would get it done by reducing spending for everyone to zero. The argument has a certain cold logic, but it's a nonstarter in New York and Kansas , where the right being enforced is to a sound basic education.

If a New York court closed the schools, it would be the judges who violated the state constitutional right, by denying any education to all students. That would undercut the only leg the court has to stand on, the rule of law. Nonetheless, when the Kansas court raised the question of whether it should close the schools, the threat was enough to pry some money from the legislature.

New York 's high court made a grave mistake when the judges transferred the power to decide what is a sound basic education from the legislators to themselves. Assuming it is too late to admit its error, the court should stick to issuing a declaratory judgment that the state does not deliver a constitutionally adequate education rather than ordering the legislature to do anything. This, as it happens, is precisely the position urged by both Gov. Pataki as defendant, and his counsel, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

The coercive force behind such a declaratory judgment would come from all those who want to improve the schools, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who demanded and got responsibility for the city's schools, and the voters of the state, for whom there is no more important issue.

When courts claim that they have power to make legislatures spend more to vindicate a constitutional right to basic education, they tamper with a basic tenet of our democracy -- no taxation without representation. Voters are entitled to hold political officials accountable for the taxes they levy, the money they spend, and the education they produce. When judges pretend that legislators are their marionettes, the legislators can escape accountability, but only if the voters are fooled. They shouldn't be.

Messrs. Sandler and Schoenbrod are professors at New York Law School and authors of "Democracy by Decree: What Happens When Courts Run Government" (Yale University Press, 2003).